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Article 1763 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Philosophical Foibles of John McCarthy
Message-ID: <1991Nov29.235448.6001@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 91 04:54:47 GMT
References: <1991Nov28.173516.5976@husc3.harvard.edu> <5755@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov30.030024.27968@nuscc.nus.sg>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <1991Nov30.030024.27968@nuscc.nus.sg> 
smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:

>In article <5755@skye.ed.ac.uk> 
>jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:

JD:
>>Before the Dept. of AI, there were some other interesting names.
>>There are books in the library marked "Bionics Lab" and others marked
>>"Metamathematics".  There was meta-maths letterhead paper in my desk
>>when I first came here (in 1983).  Their interests were fairly broad
>>in those days.  For instance, the AI library contains books of
>>Bach fugues and preludes.  (This was before the GEB book.)

SS:
>You can thank Christopher Longuet-Higgins for those books.  If you want me to
>dig out references to some of the papers that ensued, I shall blow the dust off
>those files;  but I suspect you can find a fair number of pointers there in
>Edinburgh.  While I have had many disagreements with Christopher on matters
>of both music perception and aesthetics, there is no doubt in my mind that
>his few papers say far more of substance about Bach and mind than Hofstadter
>was able to muster in his prize-winning tome.  Furthermore, given how much
>of Christopher's work DOES pre-date Hofstadter's book and how thorough
>Hofstadter's bibliography APPEARS to be, I find the lack of any reference
>to Christopher's papers to be absolutely unforgivable.  (If you want to
>go hunting for charlatans, Mikhail, sometimes it helps to start with the
>really big prize-winners!)

Hofstadter is a sitting duck, and I am too much of a sportsman.

In fact, the rest of AI weasels are getting to be too easy...

N.B.  The last chapter of Umberto Eco's latest collection, "The Limits of
Interpretation" ends with a conclusion similar to mine; anyone not yet
affected with Professor McCarthy's studied disdain for continental
philosophy is hereby invited to meditate on its dialogical message, as well
as on the drier substance of Schopenhauer's dissertation, "On the Fourfold
Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason", which is no less relevant to
our subject.

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
: Qu'est-ce qui est bien?  Qu'est-ce qui est laid?         Harvard   :
: Qu'est-ce qui est grand, fort, faible...                 doesn't   :
: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'


